Yeah, tell me about it. I have been on a hunt for The Perfect Keyboard all my life, and have tried so many my wife once even (tried to) put an official ban on buying new ones for a year

I totally agree. Ideally, the arrow keys should have their own separate little area, so your fingers can find them easier. I got pretty close recently, with a Bakker Elkhuizen S-Board 840 (the keys above the left + right arrows are dead keys, which allows you to use them to orientate yourself nicely re: the arrow keys):

It's a compact keyboard (or ‘Tenkeyless’), which I find quite important, as really wide keyboards interfere with the fact that I like to use a mouse to the left of my keyboard and a Wacom tablet to the right.

A while back I had an Apple keyboard, the wired one, which I actually loved, and used with Windows 7, but it was very wide and this soon started to really bother me. Here is a sketch of my ideal keyboard, back then:

The keyboard I am currently using (the one in the screenshot in my original post) is actually on my Dell Precision M6800. I used to insist on using only external keyboards, but since I recently switched from a huge, water-cooled monster desktop PC to this Dell laptop (which is much faster, stronger and quieter than my old tower, plus mobile), I decided to try to use the laptop's keyboard, even though I actually run it connected to a massive Samsung monitor when working at home. I really like the Precision's keyboard and fell in love with being able to map all my number pad keys to AutoHotkey scripts.
Another reason for using the laptop keyboard both at home and when travelling is that I don't have to remember two sets of keyboard shortcuts, which you would have to do if using an external keyboard when working at home.

I actually devised a system where I can use the laptop keyboard when connected to my external monitor, without the laptop's screen getting in the way:

Michael

[Edited at 2014-09-01 17:23 GMT]

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I don't think I have ever struggled with finding the arrow keys in the dark.

I suppose everyone is different. The minute I glued the 4 braille stickers on those keys I felt a huge improvement. It's not that I couldn't locate them before, it's just so much easier now.

I spend most of my time with my hands on my keyboard. E.g. when translating in CafeTran, I use the arrow keys very heavily to constantly move around in the text. Many things that other people might use a mouse for, I also do with the keyboard. I've even got a keyboard shortcut for right-clicking, e.g. Anyway, so it is important to me that my keyboard is as intuitive and easy to use as possible.

Michael

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Another reason for using the laptop keyboard both at home and when travelling is that I don't have to remember two sets of keyboard shortcuts, which you would have to do if using an external keyboard when working at home.

This is a very important point. I lose a lot of time pressing the wrong "delete" and "back delete" keys when I switch between external and laptop keyboards.

But my laptop keyboard gets too warm in the summer so I wouldn't want to use it permanently.

I like your braille stickers, Michael. The nearest I got on one keyboard was painting the back delete arrow in Tipex, using so much paint I could locate it from the bumpy arrow without looking!

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I use an ancient Compaq keyboard. It is 45 cm across and, compared to a typical laptop keyboard, the keys feel like a Steinway grand as compared to a $ 150 toy synthesizer.

I suffer terribly when I must type on a laptop keyboard, The biggest problem for me is that I tend to use the left CTRL+ALT key combination to get certain letters instead of the GR ALT key on the right (I use both, depending on what's easier). Laptop keyboards have that extra Fn key stuck in there, so I often hit that instead of the combination I need.
Motor memory is a terrible thing...

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Yes, the Fn key is another one of my pet hates about sub-optimally designed keyboards: they should all be removed, every one of them! Just add an extra row of keys at the top or something, just get rid of it! It gets in the way and is a constant source of confusion when you're typing in a hurry, as many of us often are.

Incidentally, have you tried HoldKey or WizKey? They are both great ways to type special characters. I much prefer HoldKey, but for some reason it has stopped working reliably on my Win7 system so I had to switch to WizKey.

With HoldKey, you just type a letter, and then hold the key pressed down, and a little menu will pop up with all the possible different versions of the letter you just pressed! Very intuitive!
• http://www.holdkey.eu/

Michael, that is not a good solution (for me). There are nine diacritcs in Polish. They occur quite often, so I would need to stop every time, wait for the menu to pop up, select the right letter and then continue typing.
This may be a good solution for occasional diacritics in a foreign language, but not for regular typing in that language.

A bit off-topic, but there is a way of getting "common" diacritics straight from the keyboard. Not very many people seem to remember or know this. It is quicker than getting to the special characters via "insert symbol" and you don't need to memorize the "ALT + nnnn" combinations.

For example, to get "ö" on a standard American keyboard, you first press "CTRL + SHIFT + :", let go, and type "o". (The SHIFT is needed to get to the colon).

The diacritic "shape" is intuitive, so you don't even need to memorize the necessary combinations.
To get "é", you type "CTRL + ' ", let go, then type "e"
and so on.

P.A.S.

[Edited at 2014-09-03 10:51 GMT]

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